


hours later

by lovepeaceohana



Series: Flashfic for Petunia [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, flashfic, magic!Petunia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 08:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovepeaceohana/pseuds/lovepeaceohana
Summary: Petunia is still awake, waiting, perfectly poised with a cup of tea (gone cold, now) cupped in her hands, when she hears the commotion on her front porch that turns out to be a handful of wixen and a baby basket containing her sister's sleeping babe.





	hours later

**Author's Note:**

> This follows pretty much immediately from the previous work in the series: it is the immediate aftermath of the Potters' death from Petunia's perspective. It is inconsistent with the outline of a much longer work that is the third part in this series, and I have no intention of altering it; I present it as-is, and may later choose to incorporate it into a larger work or leave it be.

Petunia is still awake, waiting, perfectly poised with a cup of tea (gone cold, now) cupped in her hands, when she hears the commotion on her front porch that turns out to be a handful of wixen and a baby basket containing her sister's sleeping babe. The news of her sister's death is a pinch in her heart, overrun in an instant with an unnameable anger that these people, supposedly the very best of their kind, thought that it would be for the best to leave young Harry in a basket on her stoop. Suppose he'd been out there all night and the milkman had come across him first? Suppose he'd woken up and wandered off? _What could they possibly have been thinking?_ She thinks of Dudley safely in his cot and shudders; there may have been no love lost between her and Lily these past years, but surely there were other options. A basket on the porch! Honestly.  
  
The conversation about the incident with the pumpkin almost doesn't happen, Petunia cradling her swaddled nephew tightly while Dumbledore summons tea things and Minerva looks very out of place in her tartan nightgown. There's so much happening, too much at once, Lily (gone) and James (good riddance) and the wizard Tom Riddle. Petunia suspects that Dumbledore isn't being as forthcoming as he ought, and snorts: of course he isn't; he'd planned to leave the babe and sneak off in the night, after all. Yet: here she was, and here they were, and the conversation about the incident with the pumpkin had to be had.  
  
"There's something else you need to know," she says, interrupting Dumbledore's tuneless whistling over the kettle. Later, she'll think that he took the news rather well, as he merely nods and requests a demonstration. The witch's reaction is far more telling, confined as it is to the wideness of her eyes and the increased purse of her lips as Petunia brings in the pumpkin and successfully rekindles its candle with a little concentration. She supposes she might have heard more about it had it not been the very wee hours of the morning and a yawn embarrasses her immediately following her demonstration, but as it is she's shooed off to bed, her protests about the care of still-sleeping Harry waved off with a chair hastily Transfigured into a second cot, which Dumbledore thoughtfully sends up the stairs to settle alongside Dudley's.  
  
The wixen go, and so too does Petunia, upstairs to lay Harry down in his new cot alongside her own dear boy. The shock of his dark hair and that awful scar next to Dudley's downy blond head and perfectly pink cheeks - they're different as night and day, and in more ways than just their appearance. Petunia can't think of that just now, though. Her heart carries enough grief tonight.  
  



End file.
